Diaspora Dialogues

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Excerpts

The House on St. Clarens

by

Daddy tears at the Styrofoam cup, making snowflakes. I stare out the window at the real snow, longing for the bite against my cheeks.

“How have you been sleeping? ” he asks.

“Every night, out like a light,” Granny says.

“That’s not what the nurse told me. She says you’ve been waking up, screaming out. Like you did when I was a child. Do you remember, Mom? ” He wanders over to the dresser and begins examining her bottles, messing them up, clinking glass.

When I see Daddy get like this, I feel protective of him, as though I’m seeing him through the eyes of a social worker. A neglected child screaming out for attention. Now that I teach grade one, it’s particularly weird. I wish I could help him, but I know from experience it’s best to leave him alone.

“I’ve always slept well,” Granny says.

“That’s not what I remember.” Daddy laughs. His salt-and-pepper hair looks bristly as a scouring pad. “What did you dream about after Kaz was gone? Did you imagine that he was still alive, chasing you around the house? ”

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 5. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“We drive past the yellow signs of Caribbean restaurants, a Goodwill and a wig shop. The dark blockaded front of the House of Lancaster Gentlemen’s Club looks like a mausoleum. “Lansdowne. The old neighbourhood. Want to get out, walk around? ” . . . ” —Lansdowne

“‘Where’s St. Clarens? ’ I asked. ‘It’s a slummy neighbourhood, full of strip clubs, near Lansdowne,’ Daddy said. ‘A lot of Japanese Canadians lived there after being released from the internment camps.’ . . . ” —St. Clarens

That Question: Notes Toward a Poetics of Truth

by

The door slams—she
The door slams—she cannot
The door slams—she cannot remember
The door slams and she stumbles down the steps
in a t-shirt, nothing else.
Blood footprints follow her.

The door slams and she manages to get out
but where are her shoes?
her underwear?

She wouldn’t fuck him
Stop it
Her clothes are in the house
Stop it
Her washing machine photographs cutlery
are in the house also
Everything she owns
lives in the house . . . 

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

For Jackson and the Chase

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“The trick,” she told me, “is to always keep moving. And if you do look back, for whatever reason, be ready for the commotion.” When no one else was watching we covered our ears with our hands, elbows angled outward as if to ward off double-fisted blows, keeping our eyes wide open. This is how Jackson taught me the necessary escape from the past by facing it down.

In the kitchen steaming with heat, working as dishwashers and short-order cooks, we leaned into memories. Both of us another Angelus Novus, in obligatory hairnets and knee-length aprons stained to a fade, tucked over tank tops and old jeans, bare feet in our fluorescent sneakers from BiWay or Thrifty’s, squealing across the linoleum floor, then a year later, tougher, lace-up combat boots, worn even in summertime.

“Like a fucking sauna.” The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. “Even with that back door propped open.”

I watched the manager look me up and down as he hired me.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“I didn’t know the difference. High school was it for me, but now Jackson had me dreaming wild about going to chef school at George Brown College . . . ” —George Brown College Chef School

“‘Like a fucking sauna.’ The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. ‘Even with that back door propped open.’ . . . ” —Yonge Street

Personal Treasures

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I have to move. I have to move both myself and my treasure chest out of Parkdale.

I knew my time here was limited: I knew it the first time I saw a café where a cup of coffee cost over two dollars; I knew it when the condominiums started going up. My last apartment was going to be renovated when they turned the dive bar below it into a swanky lounge. It must rent now for twice as much as I paid, as it’s right on Queen. So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class. But I don’t have years to wait.

The construction to eliminate the Dufferin Jog has restarted. It was dormant for so long that I had been simply going about my business. Now that the machines are in motion, my business is to rescue my belongings from the path of excavation and move to a different part of town.

I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class . . . ” —Jameson Avenue

“I will barely exist in one of those highrise low-rent buildings. I must have a sentimental attachment to the West End. But the West is not my kind of neighbourhood anymore. I’ve been here so long that I’m no longer blending in with the scenery . . . ” —Parkdale

“My last apartment was going to be renovated when they turned the dive bar below it into a swanky lounge. It must rent now for twice as much as I paid, as it’s right on Queen . . . ” —Queen Street West

“I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything. I expect there would be no people on the street at night that far north. So I explored the parts of downtown that are still considered bad neighbourhoods . . . ” —Jane and Finch

“Just south of there, Sherbourne and Queen is still pretty rough but it’s hemmed in on all sides by antique shops and brunch places and homes that people actually own. It won’t last long . . . ” —Sherbourne and Queen

the inviolable heart

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It is my fifth birthday and I become aware. A canary is trapped inside my chest cavity. Its claws cannot grip the slippery bones of my rib cage. It flies in circles searching for a safe place to rest. It finally perches on the conical pouch that forms the left ventricle of my heart. Its feathers are fluffed, eyes half-shut, wings droopy with exhaustion. The unfamiliar stillness scares me more than the constant fluttering. Breathing becomes difficult. My lungs spasm and squeeze the bird between sinew and flesh. Its beak lacerates muscle tissue. A tiny stream of blood spreads over its yellow crown of feathers. My wounds heal but the bird never moves again.

A month later my family leaves the Philippines in a silver jet plane to immigrate to the province of Ontario in Canada. I imagine that the x-ray machines at the airport will reveal my secret but the tall white man at the border just smiles and allows us into this strange new country.

I am now an adult and I do not know if the bird is sleeping, dead or paralyzed with fear. When I die, please remove it from my chest.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“Such elegant street names to camouflage the poverty and racial conflict that came with living in the Malvern Jungle . . . ” —Malvern Jungle

Switch

by

Snazzy pauses at the corner of a brick building at the edge of Moss Park. The ground reeks of pee and puke. Looking upward, she sees the tip of the steeple on the old stone church. The doctor’s office, where her mother had taken her as a child, is located directly across the street from it. Wiggling her nearly frozen toes, she wills her feet to keep walking.

Christmas wreaths, lit by small red candles with yellow plastic flames, hang from lampposts. Their light mutes the stars. Between contractions, Snazzy counts the ornaments, and the city blocks, to her destination. Each time a new pain, sharper than the last, threatens to buckle her knees, she stops, massages her lower back and breathes deeply.

When she steps off the curb and out between parked cars, a driver leans on the horn and swerves to avoid hitting her. She crosses the street, shuffles up the walkway and peers through the glass in the front door of the doctor’s office. Except for a sliver of light in the hall and blinking, multi-coloured Christmas bulbs in the front window, the office is dark. She tries to open the door anyway, but it is locked.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“Snazzy pauses at the corner of a brick building at the edge of Moss Park. The ground reeks of pee and puke . . . ” —Moss Park

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